McPhee's best-selling account of places where people are locked into contested territories, The Control of
Nature examines in detail the strategies and tactics through which people attempt to control their natural
surroundings.
The three essays which make up this book first appeared in the New Yorker. They describe "efforts to pit
human ingenuity against the might of Mother Nature . . . in the lower Mississippi Valley, on the volcanic islands
of Iceland, and in the canyons of Los Angeles's San Gabriel mountains. In each case, {McPhee argues}, people risk
their lives and incur colossal expense to live in places where geology and weather say they have no business to
be." (Libr J)